Wednesday, 4 May 2011

Call for nominations

The Save Our Pubs and Clubs Campaign are calling for nominations from members of the public for the best pub smoking area. You can send them your nomination here. All they need are brief details – they will then go on to contact the licensee to get more information.

Some may argue that giving an award for smoking areas is in effect legitimising the smoking ban. However, at present it is a fact of life that pub operators have to live with, and to argue otherwise is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Despite the ban, smokers are still more likely to be pub customers than non-smokers, and it makes good business sense for pubs to extend a warm welcome to them as far as possible within the law. Highlighting the provision of smoking areas also helps keep the general issue of the smoking ban in the public eye.

One of the key features of a successful smoking area is that it should make smokers feel valued and part of the pub in general, something that a dingy lean-to tacked on at the back will never do. It is disappointing that one or two high-profile pubs that do many things well have made little effort to cater for smokers, even though they clearly have the space to do so and in other respects have received significant investment.

Probably the best smoking shelter I am aware of in the local area, and one I will be nominating, is that at the Railway, Rose Hill, Marple, which is a smart area of covered decking at the rear of the pub overlooking the garden and car park. It is attractive and modern and gives the impression of considerable expense having been incurred on it, and is only a short, level walk from the main bar of the pub.

It is also noteworthy that in the recent refurbishment of the Tatton Arms at Moss Nook an attractive dedicated smoking shelter has been provided, although that isn’t as well integrated with the rest of the pub.

6 comments:

On no account nominate anywhere. Quality smoking areas always sail close to the wind regarding their adherence to the minutiae of the regulations. A nomination on this site will be setting up the pub in question as an Aunt Sally. I'm sorry you don't see this as obvious.

The one and ONLY decent smoking area I have seen was in a revamped pub in Surrey some years ago. It had a decking area, roof and heating with of course seating. It was full every afternoon and evening for a week and then the Council demanded it was taken down as it was techinally at fault. No idea why, it had no sides and rain still got inside it.Anyway it was duly removed. The pubs failed within a couple of months and still lays empty.

It would be an interesting exercise (while you're at it) to compare the pubs' levels of business with the levels of comfort and attractiveness of the smoking areas they provide. If, as I suspect, those pubs with nice, welcoming smoking areas are doing good business, and those without are struggling, it would then indeed send a strong message to the industry, and also to the likes of ASH. Even better if the results of the survey were to be reported in the MSM.

Good point, but it would be difficult to create a level playing field for such an exercise - very often it is the pubs that have received investment across a number of areas that have decent smoking areas.

Plus there are pubs such as those in city centres and those concentrating on dining that can manage to succeed without decent smoking facilities.

From my observation, pubs in residential and suburban locations that still manage to do a reasonable trade do tend to have made an effort with smoking facilities, but I'd struggle to prove it.

In my link are a couple of photos of the smoking area, upstairs and downstairs, of the pub I use occassionally. The brewery fought very hard to get the permission for the build and, of course, the council didn't like it but it was passed as ok because it only has 2 walls.

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Salient quotations

"If I see one more politician who voted for the smoking ban crying crocodile tears about the state of the pub industry, I may throw up." (Chris Snowdon)

"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end." (David Cameron, 2008)

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H. L. Mencken)

"The final nails have now been hammered into the coffin of the freedom to smoke in enclosed public places. This piece of legislation must be one of the most restrictive, spiteful and socially divisive imposed by any British Government. (Lord Stoddart of Swindon)

"Raising taxes on alcohol to prevent problem drinking is akin to raising the price of gasoline to prevent people from speeding." (Edward Peter Stringham)

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (C. S. Lewis)

"People who deal only in 'craft' beer do not care about some dirty old pub and the dirty old people who are in it and the dirty old community that it holds together." (Boozy Procrastinator)

"There's a saying that, given time, all organisations end up as if they were run by a conspiracy of their foes." (Rhys Jones)

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

"No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare." (Kingsley Amis)

"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves,
For you will have lost the last of England." (Hilaire Belloc)

What's this all about?

This is not a beer blog. It's a view of life from the saloon bar, not entirely about the saloon bar - which of course is a metaphorical place as well as a physical one. It is as much about political correctness and the erosion of lifestyle freedom as it is about pubs and beer. And, while I enjoy cask beer, I don't assume that it is the only alcoholic beverage worth consuming.

I'm a non-smoker, but not an antismoker. I believe the owners of private property should be entitled to choose whether or not smoking is permitted on their premises. If any supporter of pubs still thinks the smoking ban was a remotely good idea, just look around at all the pubs that have closed since 1 July 2007. The smoking ban is what prompted the creation of this blog back then and, while it touches on many other topics, it remains essentially its core theme. However, there remains much to be enjoyed and celebrated in pubs despite the effects of the ban.

I condemn drunken driving, but there is no evidence that driving after consuming a small quantity of alcohol is dangerous, and the campaign to discourage driving even within the British legal limit has been a major cause of the decline of the pub trade in recent years. Reducing the current legal limit - a proposal fortunately rejected by the Coalition government - would lead to the closure of thousands more pubs and would not necessarily save a single life. In my view, this is at least as much a threat to pubs as the smoking ban.

As you will probably gather from reading the blog, I live in Stockport, Cheshire, a thriving town which is definitely not part of Manchester and has one of the finest collections of characterful pubs in the country.

The blog is written purely for my own entertainment and to get things off my chest. It walks a tightrope between libertarianism and conservatism. It is nostalgic, idiosyncratic and at times inconsistent. You are welcome to disagree, but if you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

I have no connection with the tobacco industry and receive no funding from it.